How do you know what you know?

How DO you know what YOU know?  This is a very profound question, because how can we be sure that we know is real or correct?  Do we take the time to verify every bit of information to determine if it is indeed true?  As we grow and learn, we gather information and we learn the ability to determine what is true versus false. As children, we might be teased or be fibbed to for entertainment. What would happen if we never learned to differentiate this from facts?

Have you ever heard of Snipe Hunting? If you haven't heard of Snipe Hunting, the storyteller builds up the interest by describing the animal to be mystical or magical -- perhaps like a type of furry animal akin to a raccoon.  The hunting goes like this, one person is told to stand in the forest with a bag ready to capture the Snipe, while the other hunter (storyteller) goes to find the Snipe and plans to chase it into the bag. Reality is that the storyteller leaves the naive Snipe Hunter in the forest holding the bag, while they head home holding their belly as they laugh about tricking the other to stand in the woods and wonders how long they will really stand there holding the bag before giving up as there is no such thing as a Snipe.

How many kids are told these tales or even taken into the woods to hunt for the mysterious Snipe?  After this sort of trickery, one might become more suspicious of what others are telling them. They might take more time to consider if what they are being told is in fact true.

Snipe hunting might be showing my age as we don't see many posts on Facebook that mention Snipe hunting, but how many of us post a little fib on April 1st to celebrate April Fool's Day?  <sheepishly raising hand here> I do, I do! This past April, I posted that I'd accepted a position in Hong Kong with my current employer and would be relocating my family to Asia. I could not believe how many people believed what I'd written. I received congratulations on my new position for MONTHS. Even my own mother was sure that I was moving to the other side of the globe. This goes to show just how much people believe what they read on social media. 

Now what did I learn on Social Media today?  I learned that many people were extremely unimpressed with the New England Patriots performance and many other people were thrilled with the Pittsburgh Pirates performance.  By reading these posts, I never needed to check the scores. It was easy to deduce that the Patriots lost the game against Cincinnati and the Pirates won their game, without having to verify this information as fact. This is making a determination of fact or fiction based on the opinions or comments of the masses. When several people post about the same topic, I am apt to believe it to be true -- especially when it comes to sports as it is a black and white topic -- either the team won or lost.  

My Facebook news feed is heavily skewed to New England and western Pennsylvania, so I can usually rely on social media for the outcomes of sporting events in Boston or Pittsburgh.  Now, if I need to know about St. Louis or Miami, I would have to seek out that information as it would not be readily available to me.

Now to answer the question, how do I know what I know to be true? Either I believe the masses or I verify or confirm the facts. For some topics, no verification is need, such as local sports, for other topics it is necessary. If it's April 1st, believe nothing. Verify everything.